


Collaboration

by actualgarbage



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Tumblr Prompt, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 06:16:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4866155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualgarbage/pseuds/actualgarbage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From then on out, snide remarks were left in both of their videos and the rivalry escalated from petty dislike to what Raven wrongly labelled belligerent sexual tension.<br/>It most definitely wasn’t sexual tension. It couldn’t be. The two seriously hadn’t even met.<br/>But it looked like that was going to change.<br/>Clarke was staring at her computer trying not to let her jaw gape while Raven looked over her shoulder cackling. She was staring at an email from none other than Bellamy Blake himself. More surprising than that, it was civil- nice even.</p><p>Based on the Tumblr prompt: we're youtubers and we're rivals but our fans ship us</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collaboration

**Author's Note:**

> Bear with me. I've had writer's block for more than a month and had to physically force myself to finish this, so take what you will from that. Un-beta'd and very loosely proofread.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers on the internet?” 

“Clarke,” Raven ground out through her teeth. “That’s what you do professionally. I think it’s a little too late to list that as a concern.”

In all of her years growing up, Clarke had never pictured herself giving advice to people she’d never met on camera and getting paid for it, but somehow she’d ended up with YouTube  paying her bills for her. She’d started out doing drawing tutorials because a friend of a friend needed help for a college project. Then some fans had commented on her eyeliner and she’d started doing makeup tutorials too which brought in a younger demographic who came with a lot of questions about life in general. Now, Clarke’s channel didn’t really have a specific genre, she was just sort of guessing about what to call content and throwing it into the void.

It must have been working though, because she currently had over 2.5 million subscribers. She’s a real, certified  _youtuber_ , with real fans and possibly even more unbelievable- rivals,

Well, not rivals plural, but rather  _a_ rival.

Clarke’s not even sure how it happened, really. She’d never even met the guy.

One day her fans just blew up in the comments section of one of her videos and shared it over and over tagging some guy named Bellamy Blake. She still doesn’t really even know why, but she ended up checking out his channel and  _damn_.

She might have drooled over him a little.

That was, however, until he posted a new video and called her out for some sort of factual inaccuracy in a video  she’d made and it was all downhill from there. 

As soon as the video was posted the fans went nuts. They both sort of shared the same demographic in fans- teenage girls (hers were because of content and his were because most of the viewers had eyes), and apparently teenage girls were very into *shipping.  At that point then, it didn’t matter because she’d already decided to hate Bellamy.  

 Clarke couldn’t deny, though, the whole rivalry thing had been great for publicity. For some reason the internet was crazy about any sort of “enemies to lovers” trope- trust her- she’d seen Tumblr.

* _The comments didn’t make sense to her until google told her shipping had nothing to do with UPS._

 

From then on out, snide remarks were left in both of their videos and the rivalry escalated from petty dislike to what Raven  _wrongly_  labelled belligerent sexual tension.

It most definitely wasn’t sexual tension. It  _couldn’t_ be. The two seriously hadn’t even met.

But it looked like that was going to change.

Clarke was staring at her computer trying not to let her jaw gape while Raven looked over her shoulder cackling. She was staring at an email from none other than Bellamy Blake himself. More surprising than that, it was civil- nice even.

“You guys are totally gonna bang,” Raven huffed. 

“Don’t be crude,” Clarke scoffed and tried to cover up the blush she was sporting.

It turned out that both Bellamy and Clarke were both signed with the same agency (yes, she already knew how ridiculous it sounded to have an agent to make dumb internet videos, but it was a thing people did, alright?) and the management thought it might be time for the two of them to do a collaboration. 

“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Clarke muttered, only half lying.

“Oh, please. You have a crush on the dude the size of Everest- ah, don’t try and deny it,” Raven cut her off as she tried to protest. “He gets you all riled up and you love it, okay? My bet is that the two of you will be even better when you’re actually together  in person, and if nothing else, it’ll be great for business.”

Clarke hated it when Raven was right.

But nonetheless, she sighed and wrote a reply that was very professional (perhaps a little cold, too) and invited him over to film later that week.

It was either going to go the way Raven or to hell in a hand-basket. 

+++

There was absolutely no reason for Clarke to be freaking out the way she was. It wasn’t like this was really a big deal, but for some reason it was weighing on her. 

Clarke had done plenty of collaborations before. This one was going to be no different. she just had to keep telling herself that and maybe everything would be fine.

That didn’t stop her from pacing back and forth across her apartment all morning and reorganizing everything she owned at least twice over in anticipation of Bellamy’s arrival.

Clarke had always been fairly enthusiastic about the fact that her job let her work from home, but not it felt too intimate. he wasn’t sure that she liked Bellamy well enough to let him into her home. Another part of her was worried that maybe she’d like him too much, and showing him her life in the form of four walls felt like an overload far too early in the game. That part of her was firmly in denial. She was very thankful that Raven wasn’t there to witness the way she was handling her day.

But  _God_ , she only had about ten minutes until he showed up and  _shit._

That was the doorbell. He was early. The asshole had the audacity to show up on time. She was secretly hoping he’d be fifteen minutes late and give her a tangible reason not to like him.

All she had time to do was take one more big breath before her body was betraying her better judgement and opening the door.

He was smiling. That wasn’t really something she’d anticipated. Clarke hated it. She hated it so much, in fact, that she somehow forgot to speak.

“Um, hi?” He stuttered, and shifted his tripod on his shoulder.

“Oh, uh, hi!” She could hear Raven berating her already for coming up with such a smooth response.

They stood there looking at each other for a few ore seconds than was strictly comfortable.

“Come on in, sorry,” Clarke finally gained enough of her bearings to move out of the doorway and let him in. “You can just set your stuff on the kitchen table there.” 

Clarke tried not to notice that he smelled really good as he walked past her, because that was a creepy thing to notice, but whatever cologne he had on somehow smelled like a bonfire in fall and that was just really not fair.

Words didn’t really seem to be flowing out of Clarke’s brain at the rate she wanted them to be, and so again, the two of them were trapped in a lack of conversation that was worse than any of the scenarios Clarke had imagined the meeting turning out to be. He was standing by the table and it was very obvious the both of them were avoiding eye contact like it was their job. What were you supposed to say in this situation? “Hey there, stupidly hot rival, welcome to my tiny apartment. Let’s film this,” didn’t really seem appropriate.

Fortunately Bellamy seemed to be quicker on his feet.

“So I’m just going to go ahead and address the fact that this is weird,” he was still staring very pointedly at anything other than her face. “I haven’t ever really met anyone that the internet wants e to be in love with, so this is kind of out of my comfort zone.”

“Oh thank god,” Clarke breathed. “I thought I was the only one.”

He smiled, and Clarke let out another breath that sounded more like a laugh, and just like that, the tension was gone.

“So I have to say, oh future wife of mine,” he teases, using air quotes of course, “I kind of thought you’d be taller.”

“Oh,” she raises an eyebrow, “so you think about me often?”

He claps a hand to his heart. “Only as often as the clock counts the seconds,” he delivers in a voice Clarke can only describe as “mock-Shakespearean.”

She lightly hits him in the arm while she laughs- because apparently they’re standing close enough now for her to be able to do that.

He pulls a small notebook out of his back pocket and starts flipping to a page, and there’s something in the way that he moves that Clarke just... _likes_. He stands with excellent posture, but there’s something casual about it. He just has a very commanding presence and he just feels comfortable.

She just likes his  _presence_ , though. They’re still rivals, obviously. 

“Okay. I’m not sure what you have in terms of video ideas, but I have a couple of things that I think might work.” 

He’s still flipping through the pages and Clarke is thankful that he was distracted while she was not so subtly  ~~checking him out~~  observing him. She had enough time to go get her own notebook of ideas off of one of the counters by the coffee maker before he looked up. 

“Let’s hear your ideas first,” she offers. It’s common courtesy, though. She’s fully anticipating to implement veto power here. This is where she’s expecting to not like him. So far nothing about him has pissed her off and she wants to  be able to justify this internet feud she’s certain exists- right now it’s seeming more like a long lost memory to her. 

“Well, you have to give your absolute full approval, but I was thinking we should capitalize on the way that the internet wants this to go,” he clears his throat and she hates that he’s cuter when he’s nervous. “That is, I think we should probably pretend to fight a little bit but make it...I don’t know, um” he struggles through the words and she tries to keep a serious face. He’s just really flustered and she’s really enjoying it. He seems so cocky and straightforward in his videos.

“Flirty?” she helps him out.

“Yeah,” he seems to relax at the fact she didn’t get mad about the suggestion. “But only if you want to. We’re in this together.”

She likes that. Together.

“Yeah, I think that’s a really good idea actually. It’s probably what the agency wants, too,” she gives him and it isn’t a lie. She  _does_  think it’s a good idea. She was probably going to suggest it herself. “So whatever content we pick, we just need to make sure that there are a lot of well-mannered quips, and a hell of a lot of pining glances.”

“I don’t think that’ll be hard to do,” he said in passing and then shot off a series of ideas and plans for the content of the videos.  There was a fluttering in her heart at the low timbre of his voice before she forced her focus onto the planning process.

As it turned out, the two of them worked remarkably well together and had significant difficulty picking two ideas from the list they came up with. It was a good problem to have.

They did a question and answer challenge for Bellamy’s channel. He tweeted a request for questions and the amount that came pouring in within seconds would have been remarkable to Clarke a few years ago, but by now she was accustomed to being bombarded by social media. She wasn’t even a little surprised that at least a quarter of the questions were about her. The hashtag “bellarke” was frequently used, and it was that that inspired the theme for the video on Clarke’s channel.

It was probably stupid and definitely destined to be a hit, but they decided to go through their tumblr tag and put it on camera. It was the best horrible idea she’d had for a video in a long time, and she was certain that their fans would eat it up.

They filmed the Q&A video first, and Clarke found herself more comfortable behind the camera than she’d ever been. More often than not, it felt awkward to be talking to a lens. Collaborations in general were easier, but this kind of comfortable fell in a different category than anything she’d done before. It was…nice?

It honestly was surprising that they got along so well. Raven was going to be smug as hell, but the longer she spent with him the less she cared. They ended up bickering still, but it was only good natured- not anything resembling the bitter rivalry she’d built their internet relationship up to be. Mores surprisingly, their relationship came out perfectly on camera.

It made sense to review the film from Bellamy’s camera before they filmed her video and it was exactly what they wanted. Clarke wasn’t sure how much of their interaction had been staged- she’d tried to make it come out like they’d planned, but she ended up not actually having to try that hard. They felt natural together- at least they did from her end.

She had no idea how to read Bellamy correctly (they had just met, after all) but it seemed like her ease around him wasn’t just one sided. She prayed she was right.

Lunchtime conveniently lined up with their break in filming, and they ended up making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in her kitchen. It’s the best meal she’d had in a while. They sat cross-legged on her floor and ate the triangular halves off of paper towels like preschoolers and she laughed so much that her stomach hurt because not only was Bellamy smart and attractive, but he’s _funny_ and she’s seriously beginning to think she was in trouble.

As they finish up their sandwiches, Clarke could feel that fluttering in her chest come back because this video they’re about to make had the potential to be so awkward.  It’s a bit of a relief to see that Bellamy seemed a little reserved about it too.

“This video is going to be weird, isn’t it,” If talking about it fixed the tension last time, Clarke figured it has to work again, right?

“Oh, I’m counting on it,” he grins, but she saw in the way that his shoulders relax that she was right.

“Perfect,” she countered and matched his grin. It was easy again.

He stood up and offered his hand to help her up. There was very solid warmth to his hand and when he pulled her from the floor, they both held on a little longer than was strictly necessary.

“Is it weird that I’m kind of excited to look at what’s in the tag?” Bellamy started cleaning up from lunch. “I mean I feel like I should probably be freaking out more.”

“No, I know what you mean,” Clarke replies, and she does. Because as weird as it may be, it was kind of thrilling that people liked her enough to be invested in her relationship status. “It’s kind of cool that people like us, you know?”

He grinned in understanding and put the peanut butter back in the cabinet.

“Yeah, and I mean they were totally right, too. I think I’m pretty fond of us as well,” he tossed out easily.

Making this video was going to be fun. She was suddenly very glad that she’d made a career out of talking to strangers on the internet.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments? Thoughts? Feelings????  
> I could probably be tempted into writing a part two, but I honestly don't think it was good enough to deserve it. It's your call. Feedback makes my world go round, and if you wanna chat or send me prompts you can find me on [Tumblr](protectlydiamartin2k15.tumblr.com).  
> XOXO


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